


Locks of Love

by RurouniHime



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), Confessions, Destiel Reverse Bang | Dean/Cas Reverse Bang (Supernatural), Don't copy to another site, Family Feels, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, HAAAAAAIIIIIIIRRRRR, Hair, Hair Braiding, Humor, Hurt Dean Winchester, Long Hair, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Sam Winchester is So Done, forced together (gently) by hair, so much hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: While confined to the bunker and cruelly forced by his brother to helpcleanthe damn place, Dean gives the cheap decorative comb he finds to the architect of such heartless torment. But it's not a normal comb, and it turns out Sam's hair has an agenda.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39
Collections: Dean/Cas Reverse Bang 2021





	Locks of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxymoley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxymoley/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for Locks of Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867895) by [foxymoley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxymoley/pseuds/foxymoley). 



> Yeah, I refuse to tag for crack because this could totally happen in canon.
> 
> It was a true joy to work with foxymoley on this project. The initial artwork was so fantastic and the story so sweet and silly as it rolled out, I couldn't resist. And then the ADDITIONAL artwork! _*drools wildly*_
> 
> **AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic exists in a nebulous time after the Mark of Cain but before the return of Mary Winchester. The Darkness is not involved and Season 15 is not referenced. Honestly, you don't need a ton of canon knowledge to read this. It's a pretty insular fic; the plot does not rely on touchstone events in the show. In short, THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE.**

“Well, that is just…” Dean’s not really sure what it is. He turns it over. “Yeah. It’s a comb.”

It’s a comb made of mahogany with inlaid pearl, or maybe the other way around: the ratio of red and purply-white looks pretty much equal to him, all swirled and twined together, and Dean’s no artist, but he can tell that this level of craftsmanship? Is high.

But seriously. A comb? This is what he’s been prying his way through dusty-ass boxes for in the Storage Room That Time Forgot for a week? He sighs, looking around the site of his failure. It wasn’t even in a box, more like chucked into a corner where it proceeded to build a biome of lint, cardboard shavings, and dust mites. He only found it because he—accidentally!—kicked one of the boxes. In an unpredictable fit of pique. And then kept kicking it.

Anyway.

Dean looks a little closer at the comb, and it seems like some of the shine he originally thought was there is gone. So that’s not wood and pearl at all, but some cheap ass plastic. Dean rolls his eyes at himself.

“Like you’re gonna find a Hand of God just sitting back here in the guts of the bunker.” See, this, this is why it’s not a good idea to pen Winchesters up in one place for extended periods of time. Dean goes stir crazy the normal way, with temper tantrums and dirty dishes everywhere and underwear worn for three days straight, but Sam, no, _Sam_ has to find them both a _purpose_. Dean’s current purpose, apparently, is cataloguing how much dusty crap their forebears left them.

Dean sighs, flipping the comb over again in his hand. He thinks he can see a seam now, where the plastic was melted together. None of the boxes had anything inside them, actually. It literally is just a storage room that someone forgot about.

A week of dirt and grime and a nasty ass mold he should probably be salting and burning if he’s honest, and he gets a kid’s buy-one-get-one-free comb. Fucking Sam and his fucking campaign to unearth the entire fucking bunker, _and_ keep Dean from brooding about… things.

An idea perks.

Dean tosses the comb and catches it, a slow grin drawing across his face. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the perfect thing to do with this. “Well, boys?” he addresses a roomful of long-gone Men of Letters. “Waste not, want not.”

He closes up the storage room, whistling.

.

.

“Got you something, Princess.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam offers vaguely from the table. Which is covered end to end in some disgusting looking books. The smell hits ten feet out, sour and dry and cloying like rot; Dean nearly crosses himself.

“Ugh, what the hell, man?”

Sam sighs through the painter’s mask over his nose and mouth. “So, these were in the west, west, west room.”

“Oh, good. And now they’re in the main room. Where people live.” Jeez, he’s going to die. His eyes are watering. “Or try to. Sam, I’m asphyxiating.”

Sam tosses him another mask. So Dean puts it on and drops into a chair to help.

When half an hour has gone by and he feels that, by God, he’s helped enough for one damn day, he leans back in his seat to stretch out his spine and something long and stiff shifts in his pocket. He smothers a grin.

“Here, dude.” He’s fidgety already, like he was before all this stupid house arrest shit started, and he just needs another _distraction_. He takes out the comb and tosses it into Sam’s grimy lap. “For your nightly regime.”

Sam stares nonplussed at the black markered ♥Sammy♥ that Dean so thoughtfully penned onto the side without the seam. “Are you kidding me?”

Dean clutches his heart. “That is a gift, Sammy. A gift.”

“Great.” Sam looks closer. “Hey, this is… This is kind of nice, actually.”

“Yeah, I thought that, too. Look closer, it’s plastic.”

Sam frowns at the comb. “I don’t think…”

“Fruits of my labor in that storage closet downstairs. The only fruit. So thank you so much for _that_ assignment. Now I’m letting you reap the benefits. For your luscious locks,” Dean finishes, leaning forward to tweak one of said locks. Sam jerks away with a grumble.

“There was really nothing else down there?”

“Sam? That closet is where moving boxes go to die.”

Sam sighs. “I guess every house has that room.”

“Yep.”

.

.

He’s woken in the dead of night by a horrible monster.

It’s huge and furry up top and it stumbles around like it’s drunk. “Deeeaaaan,” it moans, coming forward with claws outstretched as Dean works to get his gun free of the stupid pillowcase while trying not to pee his pajama pants.

But then the monster swings down to sit on the edge of his bed and starts wringing its hands together. Dean blinks once, twice, hand still trapped hopelessly in the pillowcase. “Sam?”

“Dean,” it moans again, and yes, that’s definitely Sam, but his silhouette against the hallway light doesn’t look right. “Something happened, I don’t know, I can’t—”

Dean rubs his eyes, then struggles upright and gets the lamp on. And it’s definitely Sam sitting there on the edge of his bed in that ratty old t-shirt and lightning bolt boxers, but—

“Dude. Your _hair_.”

“I know,” Sam moans, dragging his hands through thick tangles of auburny brown that now tumble almost down to his waist. Dean shuffles forward to get his hands in it too; no way all that nonsense can be real.

“Hey.” Sam bats him away.

But Dean ain’t the big brother for nothing. He gets a nice good grip on the right half of it, and whoa, it’s soft and luxurious, “Like a Pantene commercial.”

“Shut up.”

“No, look, it’s glowing under the stage lights. Did you fuel it, Sam? Fuel it?”

Sam works his hair free of Dean’s hands and it immediately fluffs up to obscure his face. “Dean, seriously, this is crazy! I woke up like this, I thought I was being strangled.”

“Okay, okay.” Dean gets up and pads over to turn on the overhead lights. Under the glare, Sam’s hair looks even more… more… “Lush. Pretty. Yaaaaaay.”

“I am never letting you watch SNL again.”

“Look, are you alright? Anything hurt?”

“Just my elbow where I smacked it trying to get out from under all this.”

Dean settles back against his headboard with a huff, rubbing a cautious hand over his ribs. He feels a little winded, but he always does these days, ever since the event of which they do not speak. Dean would speak of it, but no one else ever wants to, so. He’s well healed by now; the soreness is psychosomatic, not worth bringing up. “Dude, what were you doing right before bed? Anything weird? I mean, we were poking around those books, did you—”

“Dean, I know better than to accidentally cast an ancient spell, come on.” Sam rolls his eyes and slumps further into himself. “I just, you know. Took a shower. Brushed my teeth. Read for a minute, then fell asleep.”

“Right. Okay, so.” Dean rubs his face again. It’s way too early for this. Or late. He wishes there were windows. And then there it is, the excuse he’s been looking for all freaking week:

“Hey, I’m calling Cas, maybe he has some ideas.” Asshole needs to come back anyway. He’s been gone for a good long while now—two weeks, not that anyone’s been counting, and before that, another week away—and Dean’s had it up to here with that noise. Cas is the one who instituted this lockdown, and yeah, sure, it was the smart thing to do, considering what happened, but it’s been over a month now and Dean’s done with it if Cas isn’t even going to stay and suffer through it with him. He scrabbles for his phone on the bedside shelf and knocks it and his hairbrush onto the floor. Cursing, he leans over the edge of the bed, then stops, staring. “Sam.”

“What?”

The incredulity is bubbling up right alongside a fiendish sort of glee even he’s ashamed to be feeling. He picks up the brush and deliberately waves it in Sam’s face. He has to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. “Anything _else_ you did before bed last night?”

Sam looks at the brush, at Dean, and turns bright red.

.

.

“So, okay, why am I only seeing a cheap ass plastic comb again?”

 _“I don’t know, Dean,”_ Cas says over the phone. _“It may be cursed, or magically obscured in some—”_

“It’s not cheap ass plastic,” Sam shouts. “It’s pearl and mahogany and it’s beautiful.”

“Thank you to the peanut gallery,” Dean shouts back, then rolls his eyes. “I’m telling you, Cas, you need to get home—”

_“What?”_

Dean flails. “ _Home_. Here. The bunker.” What hellish thing did he do in his previous life to warrant this bullshit? “The hair is just—There are no words, Cas!” There are words. The words are _cascading_ and _fulgent_ and _all over the damn table_.

_“Is it… It’s still growing?”_

“Well, yeah, because he keeps combing it!”

A pause, then the Dean-is-an-idiot voice: _“Why are you still letting him touch the comb?”_

“I have _tried_ to remove it from his sasquatch paws, what do you think I’ve been—You know what? Screw this, where the hell are you?”

“Here,” Cas says from the opening bunker door. Dean whirls and looks up, then exhales loudly. Seeing Cas standing there again in his trench coat is like—it’s something, and the bunker inexplicably feels warmer, which is ridiculous because Cas coming into it doesn’t get rid of the ice-cold vault part. The bunker is so heavily warded these days that if Cas had any more grace in him than he currently does, he’d never get inside.

Cas comes to the railing and frowns over it at the spreading auburn sea. “Hm.”

“Hey, Cas,” Sam says.

“Finally.” Dean takes the comb away from his brother, slaps it down on the table, and shakes his phone at Cas. He waves him down the stairs impatiently. “Look at it! It’s like Ju-On in here.”

Cas comes down and heads straight over to Sam, where he peers at the comb. “And you found this in the bunker?”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, in a corner. Gathering lint.”

“It doesn’t mean any harm,” Sam says, mulish. His fingers slide over the tabletop, and Cas just as casually slides the comb away from him using his sleeve-covered palm. He pockets it, then turns and glares at _Dean,_ like this is his fault.

“Well, it’s clearly enchanted,” Cas says, turning the frown up to eleven.

So that warm, welcome-home feeling certainly didn’t last long. “Oh, clearly.”

“You do not touch enchanted things,” Cas growls, stalking around the table into Dean’s space, kicking hair out of the way as he comes. “Especially down here.”

“Hey. I touched and I’m just fine, okay?”

“You had no business handling it at all!” Cas’s eyes are fiercely blue. “What if it had killed you? Or Sam?”

Dean throws up his hands. “Well, it wasn’t like it was in a lockbox!” His blood is thrumming now, adrenaline like a case, like a hunt gone right, like the best bourbon in the world blistering the back of his throat. He refuses to give ground. He glares at Cas across about five inches of space, and Cas glares right back.

“Guys, relax,” Sam says, having retrieved the comb out of Cas’s pocket as he swept by, and now running it contentedly through his mane again. “I checked it for curses, hexes, all that stuff like in Rowena’s books. I think it’s here to help.”

 _It’s here to help,_ Dean mouths at Cas. Cas’s glare turns into a downright scowl.

“Gross, there is crow shit on everything out here, don’t you guys have a garage or something?” yells a voice from outside the still-open front door.

Dean stares up the stairs, then at Cas, who suddenly looks hunted. Cas steps back, gesturing aimlessly. “We… were on a hunt when you called. Claire drove.”

“Oh. Great.”

.

.

“Alright, nerds,” Claire sighs, slumping down the hall, into the library, and finally into an armchair. “What have you done now?”

Dean points, innocent-faced, at Sam sitting on the floor at his feet. Claire takes one look and sporfles a laugh. Then she goes whole hog and cackles herself onto her back on the chair, until Cas has to stick out a hand to keep her from rolling off onto the floor.

“Thanks,” she says at last, wiping at her eyes and smearing some of her makeup. “I really needed that.”

Sam pouts at her from his place on the floor, amid coils and coils of the most opulent brown hair ever seen this side of a room full of heavenly hamburgers.

“Oh, hey.” Claire scoots her chair noisily across to Dean’s side. “Can I get in on that?”

“Plenty to go around.”

“Um,” Sam says.

“Yes, Rapunzel?”

“It’s my hair.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“So shouldn’t I get a say in who touches it?”

“Hey,” Claire says, leaning down over Sam’s shoulder. “You are looking at a master of mod braids here.” She indicates her own braids, tight to her scalp and tumbling down over her shoulder. “I am forever learning from greater masters so that I can better ply my trade. Though,” she continues, poking a finger at the plait Dean is currently working on, “you’re not doing too bad yourself. Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Mom,” he says, then shrugs. “Well. I mean, I was three. I sucked. But she had this really long hair and sometimes she’d sit on the floor in the living room and let me mess with it. It’s my earliest memory,” he finishes thoughtfully.

Sam groans. “And now you see why I can’t very well stop him.”

“Or me.” Claire gets to work separating out strands for a plait of her own. Dean can already tell it’s going to be more complicated that his attempts. He watches surreptitiously. And closely. “Okay, so. Mom braiding. But didn’t she, you know…”

Dean nods. Claire, having lost her parents as a result of his family’s overall shenanigans, is the only person he’ll let talk about it with such flippancy. He knows it’s a front. It’s same front as his front. “When I was four.”

Claire nods. “So you got better at braiding after.”

“Oh,” Sam perks up, “oh, now _that’s_ a story.”

“Shut up, Sam.”

“No, no, Dean, tell her all about your royal duties.”

Over by a bookshelf, Cas makes what sounds like a scoffing noise, but before Dean can frown in his direction, Claire scrunches up her nose. “Royal duties?”

“In _Moondor_ ,” Sam intones. Dean smacks him on the shoulder.

“Moondor? What?” Now Claire just looks annoyed.

“Friend of ours. Charlie.” Dean rolls his eyes and tries to play it off. “She did LARPing. You know, that’s when you—”

“I know what it is,” Claire says. “Moondor’s crazy.”

Dean frowns at her instead. “Yeah, well, our friend was the _queen_ , okay? She led battles. And… she needed braids.”

“She needed a handmaiden,” Sam adds.

Claire’s grin is entirely too sly. “Oh. So that was you, Dean?”

“Hey, you have to keep the hair out of your eyes, alright? Especially if you’re the queen.”

Claire shakes her head, chuckling to herself as she goes back to her work.

Sam’s hair otherwise occupied, the comb now rests in Cas’s bare hand, and he turns it over and over under one of the warm library lights, his other hand poised on the spine of a large tome. The danger has been decreed immaterial, considering that no one has been killed by the hair in over twelve hours, and Cas still has just enough juice to see magical shit that Dean, Sam, and Claire can’t. And probably to fight off any hidden surprises, if the comb has any.

“Okay, what’s up?” Dean finally says, after watching Cas turn the comb this way and that, mutter under his breath, and trace his thumb in intricate patterns over the side Dean didn’t Sharpie on.

“It’s an augmentation spell.” Cas squints at a tooth, brushes down it with the pad of his pinky, and looks satisfied. “Ingrained in the wood. The tree it was carved from was likely ensorcelled.”

“‘Ensorcelled,’” Dean mutters. “So they just happened to find a magic tree and carved their comb out of it?”

“More likely they ensorcelled the tree specifically with intention to create this comb.”

Dean gapes. “What the hell, man?” He waggles a braid at Cas and comb, then points the end of it at them. “They better have carved some ensorcelled furniture out of it, too, is all I’m saying. Waste of a good tree.”

Cas hums agreement. “You were right about the magic being benign overall, Sam. But the wording in the wood is peculiar.”

“How so?” Sam asks from the floor. He’s braiding his own hair now, and doing a much worse job of it than either Dean or Claire.

“It’s not English, of course. It’s not any living language. But it essentially states, over and over, ‘fecund with potential.’”

Dean blinks, then barks out a laugh. “Sam, your hair is now pregnant.”

“Ew,” Claire sniffs, and Sam thunks Dean on the knee with a fist.

.

.

The hair has stopped growing. Maybe. Dean eyes it suspiciously, nudging aside tresses to find a clear space for his boots. It has also stopped being all that fun to braid. Way too long now; Claire gave up ages ago and is now sprawled sideways in an armchair with a bowl of cereal, leafing through one of the books for a way to depower the comb. Sam is at his computer, frowning at the online database he’s been putting together since the last time a shifter weasled its way through a chink in the wards and tried to destroy the library.

Yeah, Dean sees the logic. They have a decided advantage with all this lore at their fingertips. But guess how many rats’ asses he gives? Playing field’s even now, suckers.

“Look, just break the damn comb,” Dean finally says, pushing his coffee mug aside and leaning across the table. Before his fingers can touch it, Cas yanks it away.

“Dean.”

“What? I’ll do it, give it to me.”

“We have no idea what sort of additional enchantments might be in this,” Cas growls, shaking the comb at Dean. “It could be layered wood, or a different kind of core with internal spells held in check by what’s on the outside. Magic is an extremely exacting and meticulous art.”

“Well, _I_ know that,” Sam mutters.

“So I will _exactly and_ _meticulously_ table-saw the thing in half.” Dean reaches again, but Cas gets up and moves out of range. Dean gets up as well and follows him, shuffling through Sam’s luxurious locks. “Cas.”

“Dean, if you break this without the proper fail-safes in place, you could cause yourself, or us, serious injury.”

And Dean knows this. He does. But now his hackles are right the hell up, driven by that dismissive tilt of Cas’s head as he starts scrutinizing the comb again, as though he hasn’t glowered the damn thing straight into the next century already, as though Dean isn’t standing right there beside him for the first time in two weeks, when they’ve barely spoken at all over the phone and not for lack of Dean trying. Maybe it’s the fact that Dean’s ribs still hurt, even though there’s nothing left to hurt him anymore, and Cas keeps eyeballing him whenever he gets up or sits down or breathes and happens to wince a little. Maybe it’s the fact that Cas can barely power a garage door opener these days, but doesn’t seem all that bothered by it. Not bothered enough to stop risking his life, at any rate.

“Give me the comb.”

Cas’s hand tightens around the object in question, and for the first time since he arrived, he looks Dean directly in the eye, a hundred percent of his focus. “No.”

Dean absently rubs his ribs. Cas’s eyes flash right to the motion and stick.

“For fuck’s sake,” Dean grunts, turning away to grab his coffee, then turns again mid-sip and lunges for the comb. Just as quickly, Cas snaps it out of reach, a hand planted in the center of Dean’s chest, nearly upending his mug. It’s the most Cas has touched him since that day in the forest that no one likes to talk about, and Dean’s blood boils over. “Cas!”

“Back off, Dean.”

“Make me.”

The glitter in Cas’s eyes promises that he certainly will. “You think I can’t?”

Oh, Dean could bring it right down to the basement with comments about deteriorating grace, but he’s classier than that. “Not sure how to answer that. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Twelve and a half days is an age now?”

“Oh my god, _shut up_ ,” Sam says suddenly. “Don’t you two know how to do anything but argue anymore?”

Dean stares at Sam, then rather awkwardly at Cas. Yes, it’s been…a little while since they had a civil conversation. But you know what, if Cas didn’t keep swishing up and out of the bunker at the drop of a hat, maybe Dean wouldn’t be so irritated when he comes huffing his way back in, like having Dean call him for help with Cousin Itt over here is the most inconvenient shit that ever happened on the face of this earth. Like Dean’s the one who told him to go again—and seriously, that was one time, _one_ , and Dean is sorry, okay? God, is he ever sorry. It’s like a phobia, it’s gotten to the point where Dean basically equates Cas walking out the door with Cas dying, but Cas won’t stop doing it, and then the forest happened, and Dean gets to spend at least two nights a week waking up in cold sweats, clutching his ribs with his other hand twitching around an invisible angel blade, Cas’s name still ringing in the room from when he called it out.

Shit, he hopes Cas can’t still hear prayers.

“Dean, I’m… sorry,” Cas says, stiff.

“Yeah.” Dean clears his throat, still slightly in his own head. He might even say hey, maybe this is also the comb’s doing, except it’s how they behave all the time now. When Cas is actually here, anyway. “Yeah, okay.”

Cas’s head tilts. “That’s it?”

He blinks. “What’s it?”

“Aren’t you sorry, too?”

 _Yes!_ he wants to shout, _yes, always!_ But when he opens his mouth— “Hard to be sorry for walking out when I’m not the one doing it.”

Cas jerks back like he’s been burned. “I’m the only one who can leave here right now.”

“Come on, even you can’t be angel-hunting all the time.”

“There are cases, Dean. Excuse me for not wanting innocent people to suffer while you stay here—”

“While _I_ stay here.”

“Dean,” Cas sighs, shutting his eyes.

“Because I didn’t decide this. You did. Sam did. I’m fine.”

“Dean—”

“No, say it, Cas. I’m hiding. That’s it, isn’t it? Dean Winchester, hiding away from the damn world—”

“You’ve had a trauma, Dean—”

“Oh, like you care?” He gestures too vociferously and there goes the coffee, finally, all over his shirt. He hisses and jumps back, and luckily it’s not hot anymore, but now he’s soaked. He rounds on Cas in embarrassment. “You’re never here!”

“I was helping Claire—”

“Who I’m sure just begged you to drop everything and come along.”

Castiel’s eyes darken, and over in the corner, Claire squirms in her chair, trying to crunch her cereal a little less loudly. And that, of course, was the wrong move on Dean’s part because Castiel’s embarrassment is erased in an instant, replaced by a stony, protective ire.

“It’s none of your business if she begged or if I offered it, Dean. I notice she didn’t ask you.”

 _That_ stings. Dean had noticed, too. Ugh, his whole chest is clammy now. He shoves his mug away, strips off his shirt, and slings it to the floor with a wet smack. “You wouldn’t have let me go even if she had.”

“Uh, leave me out of this,” Claire calls, but immediately lifts her hands in surrender at the look Cas shoots her way.

“You aren’t the only person I care about, Dean,” Cas seethes, right up in his face.

“Yeah, right back atcha!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sam hisses, “you want to be all up in each other’s faces for no good reason? _Fine_.”

Dean has time for a single inhale, and then suddenly he’s wrapped in coils of thick, sumptuous hair, wound around him from shoulder to knees, pinning his arms to his sides, lifting him off the floor and shoving him full-frontal against Cas. Who is also wrapped in hair.

Cas’s eyes are wide, and very, very close. And Dean… is very much not clothed from the waist up, and smells like coffee. He moves his hand, hits something warm and decidedly not his, and gurgles a little.

For a second, Sam looks a little gobsmacked at what he’s accomplished. But he rallies like the pro he is.

“You don’t have to do it in here,” Sam says, slow and deliberate as he eyes them both from where he now looms like some eldritch god over his laptop. The hair flows around him, world’s most vitamin-nourished tentacles. “God knows I have enough hair now that you could do it on freakin’ Jupiter. But you are going to hash this out or I swear to everything holy and unholy, I will strangle you both with my hair and be done with it.”

Claire spews cereal across the floor in one great snorting spray. She slaps a hand over her mouth and stares wide-eyed over the top of it. Sam nods at them, and goes back to the database, running the comb idly through his hair.

.

.

The hair bundles Dean and Cas up and deposits them in the kitchen. Which, okay. Food.

Except Dean doesn’t really want to eat with all this hair everywhere. Yeah, Sam takes good care of his hygiene but it’s _hair._ Dean’s stomach rolls a little, and from the look on Cas’s face, he’s feeling something similar.

Not that either of them could make any kind of snack, wound up like the stupidest potato sack race ever. “Could you move your—What the hell is that?”

“My knee, Dean.” Cas’s voice has dropped down to near-distracting levels of growliness. At least it would be distracting if Dean couldn’t taste the irritation radiating off of Cas into his chest.

“Yeah, well, it’s jabbing me in the thigh.” When did Cas get so bony anyway? Hasn’t he been eating?

But what would Dean know about that anyway? Cas is gone more often than he’s here. Dean shifts uncomfortably, trying to straighten his torso, and the old ache flares back up between his ribs.

He knows there’s nothing there, that he’s completely healed. But some days. Some days.

“Ow,” he says under his breath.

“What is it?” Cas asks, sounding concerned, and Dean snaps.

“Be good if someone could still, I dunno, mojo us out.”

Cas’s look would _cut_ him. That’s why Dean’s looking at the floor now and not at Cas, feeling a little sick and a little vindictive, and a lot like an ungrateful dick.

.

.

They’ve managed to sit, an awkward two-stool arrangement that Dean kicked together while Cas kept them both standing upright as best he could, and hair or not, Dean is getting a little hungry. He wonders if Cas is, too, if he gets hungry now that most of his grace is gone. Logic would dictate he must. Maybe if Dean saw his best friend more often, he would know these things. Maybe he’d know if Cas sleeps when he gets tired, or craves coffee in the mornings.

Sam hasn’t come in. Sam’s hair, on the other hand, never left. Dean’s still half naked, but the hair is kind of freakishly warm. Soft and comfortable, like a nice robe.

Okay, ew.

A while ago, Claire did skirt her way into the kitchen to make a Sam-sized bucket of popcorn before the hair ate the microwave or something, and that was when she told them they had an algorithm running on the database, then asked Dean for his Netflix password while they waited. And now it’s been a long while and Dean’s dying to know what they’re watching.

Twin yells from the direction of the TV lounge answer his question: “Get to da choppaaaaaaaah!”

“Son of a bitch.” Dean kicks away a third stool with a clang, and Cas jumps.

“What?”

“One of my favorites.” He cannot keep the heat from his face. But it’s fine, he’ll deal. He’s been shirtless before in front of Cas. Just, not _against_ Cas. At least Cas is still clothed. Not that it matters, being forced face to face like this. All of Dean’s expressive actions are tied up in his hands, which are tied _down_ by Sam’s hair. He’s never felt so skinned, and he has literally been skinned, so that’s saying something.

“Which one?”

Dean strangles back his first, snotty response. “Predator. People in a jungle being hunted by an alien. You wouldn’t like it.”

“I might.”

“Fine, go watch it, then.”

“You think I wouldn’t go if I could?” Cas spits out.

Dean doesn’t answer. After a minute, Cas sighs. “Dean—”

Dean shakes his head, one quick snap, and Cas subsides. The room feels very, very heavy.

.

.

It’s been almost another half hour when Cas sighs again. “Dean, I’m sorry,” just as Dean says, “Cas, look, I’m an asshole.”

They stare at each other. Maybe Dean’s gotten used to it, because the space doesn’t seem so close now. Or maybe he’s accepted that he will never again have a shirt. All sound from the TV room shut off about twenty minutes ago, when Sam wandered by to announce that they now had a preliminary list of sources to try out on the comb. Given the smirk his brother had aimed their way when he passed the kitchen door, Dean had wondered exactly how hard Sam planned on looking, but it was an uncharitable thought and Dean was suddenly too tired to bother with petty pouting.

“It’s just. This is the longest I’ve been in your company for weeks, man.”

His tone must not be as blameless as he’d aimed for, because the hair gives a little jerk, shaking him. Dean grimaces at the phantom pull to his ribs, and Cas frowns at the hair.

“I… don’t really know what to say,” Cas offers, subdued.

“Now? Or ever?”

Cas just shrugs, and Dean curls his hands into fists at his sides. Abruptly, he just wants to fill his lungs, breathe in and in until he can’t expand his chest anymore, but he can’t, it’s all so cramped down here in this hair, and in this windowless dungeon. He makes a disgruntled noise, wiggling his shoulders, and Cas, to no avail.

“Sam,” Cas barks all of a sudden. “Loosen it.”

Nothing for a second, then the pad of footsteps down the hall. “What’s—”

“Just.” Cas shuts his eyes briefly. “Could you loosen the part around your brother’s ribs?”

“Oh, shit,” Sam says softly. “I don’t really know how to… Hang on.”

There’s some muttering, then Claire saying, “What’s wrong with his—” before Sam shushes her. More muttering from Claire and Sam, some bickering about the comb, and then all of a sudden, the hair is uncoiling and recoiling, away from Dean’s chest and around his and Cas’s arms instead, pulling Dean up against Cas’s side from shoulder to wrist.

And he can breathe.

And he’s a little cold now.

“Did that do anything?” Sam asks tentatively from beyond the tress-choked doorway.

“Yeah,” Dean says before Cas can answer. “Thanks.”

“Algorithm just finished up,” Claire calls from the direction of the library. “We’re on it.”

“Look,” Sam tries, “I don’t think it will release on my account. Not anymore. We found some stuff on concessional bindings that looks a little like this.”

Dean rolls his head on his shoulders and tries not to hate his life. He tries not to hate his life at least once a week lately. “So, what? We’re here until we…”

“Come to an agreement,” Cas mutters.

“Maybe not.” Sam sounds hopeful. “Maybe just an understanding.”

“Look, whatever it is, you guys better work it out,” Claire pipes up from just behind Sam. “I mean, this has been fun and all, but I have to be back to help Alex study in, like, a day.”

Dean rubs his eyes because now he can. He really wants his shirt, but he wouldn’t be able to get it over his bound arm anyway. “Why can’t you just, I don’t know, think it off?”

“He tried,” Claire says. “But we think his role in this is more like a conduit. He gives the comb power, a suggestion, maybe, and then the comb does what it wants.”

What it wants, apparently, is to fulfill Sam’s one true wish of making his brother and a mostly-fallen angel bitch each other into submission.

Dean’s mind flies back to that day in the forest, to the rain pattering on the leaves. To the way Cas had _moved,_ swift and sharp and deadly.

The idea of Cas submitting to anything is laughable.

“Okay, Ricki Lake and Dr. Phil,” Dean says. “We’re talking. I swear we’re gonna talk.”

“Who’s Ricki Lake?” Claire fires back.

“Shut up and go away. Not talking about a thing with you listening in.”

Claire sighs loudly. “Come on,” she says and drags Sam away. Dean smiles a little.

When he looks back from the doorway, he finds Cas’s gaze fixed on his torso, and not in the way he’s been low-key craving for years.

“You know there’s nothing there anymore, right?” he says after a moment, jiggling Cas’s arm with his own.

“Yes,” Cas allows, grudgingly. “But it’s still uncomfortable for you.”

Healing him was the last real thing Cas ever did with his grace. Dean knows it. Can’t stop knowing it.

.

.

Why they were in the forest doesn’t matter anymore. Just that Dean remembers the light, tinted green through the drizzle, and the way the soil soaked into his jeans when he stumbled to his knees, how it slid between his fingers as he scrambled to his feet again.

He turned, blade out, boots sliding in the mud. But not fast enough.

Kushiel, the Punisher, had not only driven his sword in. He’d turned it and jerked it left, in the arc between Dean’s fourth and fifth rib, right to his sternum. Dean grabbed the bastard’s arm, because it was all he could do, and clung to him until Kushiel shook him off, dropped him onto the ground and left him there, Dean’s heels scrabbling in the loam as he tried to find a way to breathe. But there was no good way, just a horrible wheezing he could hear growing more and more frantic, and he turned his head, his ear resting in damp moss, and watched his killer go.

The bastard got about five steps before Sam hit him, a battering ram of Enochian-concealed fury. And it wasn’t like Kushiel couldn’t handle Sam, human as he was: he tossed Sam right out of the ring of trees with an outraged shout.

But it bought Cas time.

Cas grabbed Kushiel, slung him around and knocked the Punishing Sword from his grip, then slammed the hilt of Kushiel’s own blade up into his face. Over and over, until Kushiel collapsed, blood and light streaming from his nose and mouth, and then Cas dragged him up by a fistful of jacket and rammed the Punishing Sword straight through his chest, once, twice, three times.

Kushiel exploded into light, but by that time, Cas had already let his body fall and was kneeling at Dean’s side.

Cas didn’t say a word. His hands fumbled over Dean’s chest and down his ribs, and all the little aches of being kicked around were nothing to the white hot fire slowly being smothered by numbness, and the ice crawling up Dean’s legs into his gut.

It was a shitty thing to think, but he was glad, okay, he was just _glad_ Cas was there. That Sam was somewhere nearby, that Cas was with him at the end.

He remembered gripping Cas’s wrist, and Cas meeting his eyes. And then Castiel, barely there angel of Thursday, had wiped the Punishing Sword clean on his jacket and used the tip to cut his own palms. He placed both bleeding hands flat over Dean’s wound, shut his eyes, and tipped his head back toward the sky.

For a moment, Dean’s terror was absolute, because Castiel was exploding, just like Kushiel. But this light was dimmer, as Cas’s light always was these days, a warm and golden pulse instead of a supernova’s rage, and then that incredible light was gone, and there was just Dean coughing breath back into the air as Cas keeled down over him, his entire body shaking.

And Dean hadn’t known it at the time. He’d only known he was still breathing, had only known Cas’s weight across his middle, his own blood cooling on his shirt and his hand curled into Cas’s hair, and the way they both trembled as they caught up with themselves. But that was the death rattle of an angel’s dingy, damaged grace.

Sam found them like that, his eyes wild and red, and he’d fallen right on his ass next to them, swearing over and over with his breath frosting in the air, still clutching Cas’s angel blade in one hand.

.

.

It was the second time in a week that they’d been jumped by a higher order angel.

Dean’s been torn apart by Hellhounds. Tortured in the pit for decades. Stabbed and shot and damned and Marked. He’s not sure why this one hit so much more deeply. Maybe because it was the angel of punishment himself. Maybe because the other times, Dean had seen his end coming, but this time… this time he had not known to be ready.

He has Cas’s blood in him now. Angel blood. And probably some of Kushiel’s too, because no jacket in a forest was going to clean that completely away. So he has angel in him, just a little. Just enough to undo what the Punishing Sword had done. Dean had nightmares at first, terrible ones that woke him shaking like his bones were rattling, half out of his bed and stumbling through the dark toward the door. He’d seen the sneer on Kushiel’s face over and over, felt himself discarded in the mud like trash, and something about it just stayed, for days and days after.

But eventually it went away, and all there was, was the Cas-shaped hole in the bunker and the tersely answered texts, and the memory of the devastation on Cas’s face that day in the forest as he’d stabbed that blade again and again, as he’d curled over Dean, as he’d pushed the dregs of his grace out in a bid to keep Dean on this earth.

Cas’s eyeroll had been epic when Dean had said as much. “It will regenerate, Dean.”

But it hasn’t yet. His wings, which had been looking better if their shadows were any indication, are all raggedy again, and he doesn’t fly or offer to heal paper cuts and stubbed toes, or put celestial feelers out for ancient books in rummage sales for Sam, or bring cool shit back from inaccessible cave systems in the Ozarks anymore.

What he does do is vanish out of the bunker on foot and drive off alone with a trunk packed full of angel blades and holy oil, to find out which divine dickhead has been putting hits out on the Winchesters.

Except after Kushiel bit it, there hasn’t been much noise on that front. Cas obviously gave them something to think about in that forest.

.

.

“I don’t actually think you’re hiding,” Cas mutters. He’s not staring at Dean anymore, but off to the side at a patch of floor not covered by the mane event. “You know that, right?”

For a moment, Dean’s stubbornness knows only the road to victory. Then he lets himself deflate in the hair’s grip. “I know. I just.”

Cas’s eyes rise to his. “You just what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Dean.”

“Dean,” Sam calls from down the hall, and jeez, how is he hearing this? Is this like tin-can-and-string phones, their voices just vibrating on up the line?

Dean averts his eyes. “Feels like I am,” he gets out all at once. The bunker, his home, is now warded to within an inch of its life, and he feels it every moment. He is so very aware of the emptiness beyond these walls, the ease with which they could be found. He clears his throat. “Sometimes. I bitch about it, but some days, I don’t really want to go out there at all anymore.”

“Well, it’s not because of any sort of cowardice,” Castiel snaps, more to the hair than to Dean. “I know of no other human who could withstand what has happened to you and not break.”

Dean smiles, face heating, and looks down at their arms. The hair has long since receded, a mere double cuff around his and Cas’s wrists now. He can feel Cas’s heat against the side of his hand. If he just twisted, he could lay his palm in Cas’s. “Except Sam.”

“Except maybe Sam,” Cas allows. His mouth twitches, not a smile but a perplexed sort of tic, like he can’t really articulate what he wants to say. “I wanted to stop them. Heaven. I just wanted to find them and end the problem, so you and Sam could go out again, live your lives. And Claire, she wanted to help, too, and I should have just asked you, I know, but I thought… Well. It’s not important.”

“Castiel,” Claire chastises from down the hall.

Cas rolls his eyes ceilingward, the most put upon eyeroll Dean’s seen to date. Dean snorts a laugh, and quick as a flash, Cas smiles at him. “She was helping me with the angels. Not,” he hastens, to Dean’s widening eyes, “in a dangerous way. I warded her against everything, Jody knew all about it, I promise. She was just looking through lore, finding non-angelic ways I could—”

“We could,” Dean interjects.

“… _we_ could keep them at bay.” Cas contemplates the tabletop again, then shrugs and leans back. “Not that it matters. They seem to have given up.”

Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s a problem for Future Dean. Present Dean wants to stay right here in this kitchen, his wrist tied firmly to Cas’s. “You just… You were gone, man. I just wanted you here.”

“I know."

“Or you could have taken me along.”

 _"I don’t want you out there,”_ Cas grits out in a rush, then drops his face into his hand. Dean stares, tongue stuck in a dry mouth.

Cas hunches. Still shaky, still with his head in his hand: “Every time I draw you into my problems, you—I lose you. I thought, if I could just keep you out of it. For once.”

Dean shakes his head. “So you go up against full-powered angels. On your own, when you’re like this.”

“ _No_ , Dean, it’s not about that.”

“It’s about that to me.” Dean’s voice cracks. Cas looks at him, and Dean swallows. “My best friend is out there, risking his life. And he doesn’t want me with him.”

“I do.” There is no battling that tone, or the fierce grip of Cas’s eyes. “There is no one I trust more with my life than you. No one who I know, down to my core, would protect me the way you would.” He looks at the hair curled around their wrists, now so near each other on the table. “And there is no one whose loss, whose _death_ , would hurt me more.”

“I didn’t want you to do that,” Dean whispers. “Give yourself up for me. And I know, I know you didn’t just—that you still have your grace, I get it, but. That might have been your last chance, man.” To be in Heaven. To be home. “And I took it from you.”

“Dean, my grace—It’s not the whole of me. It hasn’t been for a long time. It’s a means to an end. I don’t want it if it means I can’t be with you.”

“I’m just a guy, Cas.” _A cursed one, at that._ “You’re a freaking angel.”

“And I _need you_ ,” Cas says, low and fierce.

Dean sits, stunned to silence, and Cas stares right back, looking windblown.

Dean takes a couple deep breaths, and realizes: For the first time in a long time, the ache under his ribs is gone.

He touches his side, and Cas’s eyes follow. His free hand drops, hovers over Dean’s bare skin, but draws back without touching.

“Sometimes I’m afraid it scarred,” Cas says softly. “Even though I know it didn’t.”

“Cas, you…” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

Cas speaks, haltingly. “I have never needed anything, except to know that I was fulfilling Heaven’s will—until I met you, and your brother. Until I knew your cause, and the strange little family you have made for yourselves down here. A family of which I… am now a part. But especially you. _You_...” Cas’s free hand lifts. He hesitates, then slides his fingers to cup Dean’s jaw. His thumb strokes the crest of Dean’s cheek. “Dean, you’re very important to me.”

It’s so understated, and yet what lies underneath trembles in Dean’s chest as though his heart has shuddered. Dean swallows again. “You too, Cas,” he says, and feels foolish, except that Cas is smiling, a small, sweet thing curving the corners of his mouth. His hand is so warm on Dean’s cheek.

“I’ll stop leaving you,” he says, soft. Just between the two of them.

“And I’ll…” Dean takes a deep breath. “I’ll stop blaming you for it.”

Cas’s thumb moves over his cheek again, and Dean gives up, turns his bound hand and grips Cas’s fingers tightly. Cas glances down at their hands in surprise. Dean leans forward into his space, and when Cas looks up, he is right there.

“Cas, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t…” Cas’s mouth falls slack, as though words have failed him. It’s the dilation of his pupils that spurs Dean forward, that brings his own hand up, that has him tilting Cas’s chin, and meeting their mouths.

Cas makes a faint sound, and Dean gets a grip on his coat and pulls until Cas slides off his stool and onto Dean’s, straddling Dean’s lap. The new angle turns everything hot and thick, Dean’s head tilted back and Cas’s weight settling slowly onto his thighs, Cas’s hand a warm clutch down his bare side. Cas kisses like he means to never let Dean go, and Dean, Dean is just fine with that. He stiffens his spine and cranes a little, thrusts his chin up until Cas makes another winded sound, until Cas’s mouth opens, and then, oh, _then_.

“Oh,” says a voice from the doorway. “ _Oh._ Okay, well, good.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” says a different voice from the doorway.

Dean drags Cas closer, flipping off both voices before he just has to get his arm back around Cas. Cas doesn’t even seem to care about the voices, his hand now a vise at Dean’s nape, his lower back arched to press him full against Dean’s middle, and at some point the hair draws away from their wrists, but Dean doesn’t really notice.

He doesn’t notice much at all, except for Cas.

.

.

Claire makes a lot of noise about it while packing up her stuff

(“Geriatric frenching is so gross.”)

and raiding the fridge for Sam’s kale smoothies

(“Ugh, it’s like watching Jody and Donna go at it. Dude, don’t you have raspberry?”)

and stomping down the stairs to the garage.

(“Hey! Don’t do that on the couch, that is communal space!”

“Which you are leaving,” Dean singsongs back in between kisses.

“You are uninvited, from everything. Christmas and Fourth of July and, and you should know, Alex makes the best pies, Dean! The best.”)

She drives away still griping

(“And put a stupid shirt on already!”)

but promising to text once she gets back to Sioux Falls. Sam waves from the garage door, hair trailing behind him.

.

.

They go to bed and it’s there, and then they wake up in the morning, and the hair is gone, like it never was.

Sam plucks ruefully at hair that Dean had, up until two days ago, thought was egregiously long, but now looks like the holy grail of hairdos. “Oh, well. Easy come, easy go.”

“You think that was easy?” Cas grumbles from over by the coffee maker, and Dean leans back, reels him in by the waist, and rubs his face against Cas’s middle. Cas grunts, but his hand comes down to cradle the back of Dean’s head.

“What it was, was worth it,” Dean murmurs, which earns him a kiss from Cas and a put-upon sigh from Sam.

“Hey.” Dean points without pointing. He points with his voice. “Your fault.”

“And I have seen the error of my ways.” But Sam is smiling, a quirky, halved little thing that makes his eyes all sappy and bright.

The comb lies on the table between their breakfast dishes. No one is touching it. To Dean, it still looks like plastic. He has no idea what the others are seeing.

“I don’t get it. Did you really want us to bang that badly, Sam?”

“Dean,” Cas sighs ceilingward.

But Sam, ever unflappable when Dean most wants to flap him, just shrugs. “It wasn’t an exact science. I just… wanted you guys to work it out, I guess.”

“But why us? I mean, that thing looks like a dollar store reject to me. I know Cas can see the magic, but—” He raises the hand that isn’t slung around Cas’s middle. No way is he moving that arm. “You see actual craftsmanship.”

“The magic understood at a touch that you would not use it, Dean.” Cas speaks thoughtfully, as though feeling his way through. “Sam, on the other hand, was willing.”

 _That_ makes Sam redden, but he gamely shrugs it off again.

“Yeah, but.” Dean pokes the comb with his fork. “But in the end—I mean it gave Sam hair, but it didn’t focus on Sam. It focused on… on us.”

Sam smiles at him. Again with the sappy, knowing eyes. “Yeah, but you touched it first, Dean. I think it just wanted to fix one thing.”

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so so so much to coffeejunkii for betaing! And thank you to this fandom's storytellers in general for the idea of the Winchesters and Co putting together a bunker digital archive. I definitely didn't come up with it, but it makes so much sense.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Locks of Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867895) by [foxymoley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxymoley/pseuds/foxymoley)




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